Get ready for pro-Kremlin tinnitus – Disinformation Review

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*TRENDS OF THE WEEK*

Get ready for pro-Kremlin tinnitus

Imagine someone whispering in your ear non-stop: “Why would you bother, you will never find out the truth.”

Sometimes the voice could grow to an unbearable scream. One of the basic tools of pro-Kremlin disinformation is to fill the information space with constant noise to confuse the audience – or to at least force it to stop paying attention.

A recent target of this method has been The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), hosted by Finland. This week, pro-Kremlin attempts to obscure the public discussion around the centre grew in both quantity and absurdity.

Finnish MV-lehti published an article claiming that the “NATO hybrid centre has a license to kill”. Actually the Hybrid CoE is not a NATO centre, but an instrument of its participating countries: Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA. More fundamentally, the centre obviously doesn’t have a license to kill, as no one has in Finland.

But the orchestrated disinformation campaign does not end up with one article. What we also saw was the setting up an organisation with a similar name that calls NATO and the EU a threat for democracy in Europe. And in order to further confuse the public, a website was launched – http://hybridcoe.ru/ – [note the Russian domain] – that copies the design of the real centre.

Fake Twitter accounts resembling the Hybrid CoE logo have been circulating since autumn 2016, and some of them got activated again in September. This account has been spreading message that Finnish citizens would be unhappy with the new Hybrid Centre – referring to comments on other disinforming outlets.

Blame the victim!

We’ll leave it to more reliable sources than Vesti Nedeli to set the record straight on this. But the Russian audience is constantly exposed to this parallel reality. And the results of this disinformation campaign are clearly visible for example in a Levada centre poll on the Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocols, which reveal that 40% of Russians think it’s true, 17% think it’s false, and 44% are not aware or unsure that the protocols existed.

This week’s disinformation cocktail also included some favorite disinformation themes. We read that Europe’s excessive tolerance towards other religions results in punishing “true” Europeans, and in discriminating against orthodox values.

So disinformation outlets reported about a man being fined for eating bacon in front of Muslims in Sweden and about a Georgian judoka who suffered defeat during the course of the World Championship for wearing a cross around her neck. Visit our table to set the record straight on these two entertaining stories.

And the favourite narrative about EU orchestrating colour revolutions was revived once again. Thus, in a Moldovan disinformation-oriented outlet, the readers were convinced that if the country refuses to join the EU, Brussels will punish it with a Maidan. We are sorry to disappoint, but it is not in EU’s capabilities to instigate a nation-wide revolution.

Click here for the FULL COLLECTION of recent stories repeating disinformation.

*LATEST ANALYSES*

Three things you should know about RT and Sputnik

Fundamental differences between RT and Sputnik and what is normally perceived as independent journalism should be kept mind.

No, Denmark is not legalising sexual abuse of animals

When the intention of a media outlet is not to inform, but rather to mislead and disinform, there are different tools available in the toolbox. One of them is to pretend that a parody website spreads genuine information.

*IN CASE YOU MISSED IT*

The new EUvsDisinfo.eu website

The new EUvsDisinfo.eu website features:

Latest news and analysis of pro-Kremlin disinformation. More than 3000 cases of pro-Kremlin disinformation. The only searchable database of fake news. Stories of whistleblowers from pro-Kremlin disinformation.

*LAST, BUT NOT LEAST*

Movie Classic “Gone With The Wind” Banned in the US!

No, no one has really banned this famous historical romance film set in the American Civil war. What we see is just another example of taking an element of truth from a story, detaching it from all necessary context, and hiding it in a pile of nonsense.

Every Thursday, the Disinformation Review brings you the latest cases of news articles carrying key examples of how pro-Kremlin disinformation finds its way in international media, as well as news and analysis on the topic. The review focuses on key messages carried in international media which have been identified as providing a partial, distorted or false view or interpretation and/or spreading key pro-Kremlin messaging. It does not necessarily imply however that the outlet concerned is linked to the Kremlin or that it is pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. The Review is a compilation of cases from the East Stratcom Task Force’s wide network of contributors and therefore cannot be considered an official EU position. Likewise, the news articles are based on the analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force, so information and opinions expressed there cannot be considered an official EU position. Any errors or misrepresentations should be reported to the East Stratcom Task Force for correction at disinforeview@euvsdisinfo.eu.